The best startup investors hear from hundreds of potential investment opportunities per year. To stand out from the crowd, startup founders must absolutely perfect their pitch. Without significant funding in place, startups struggle to achieve considerable traction. In fact, recent studies indicate that 29 percent of startups fail due to insufficient funds. Without this mission-critical funding, your startup will likely fail — it's that simple. So, what are the key components of an effective investor pitch?

5 Easy Steps to Crush an Investor Meeting

Follow these simple steps to achieve startup funding success:

1. Gather Documents

The first step towards crushing your next startup investor meeting is to gather the appropriate documents. There are a few required documents that investors will need to reference during the pitch, including:

Pitch Deck: The best pitch decks follow a simple formula. Most pitch decks will typically include sections that outline the company's vision, traction metrics, market opportunity, revenue model, competition, team, and more. The pitch deck must paint a coherent, thoughtful, and engaging narrative of the startup. Be sure to cover all the bases and arrange the startup pitch deck building blocks in a way that showcases your startup's unique (and intriguing) story.

Financial Statement: A financial statement should convey the startup's financial activities and conditions. Be sure to outline your unique assets, liabilities, and net worth. More importantly, showcase how those metrics will move with the financial investment.

Business Plan: A business plan is the roadmap towards your startup goals and objectives. What are the specific strategies or tactics you will use to unlock growth?

2. Prepare for Tough Questions

Next, prepare for a lot of tough questions. During the pitch, most experienced investors will ask a ton of questions. These questions are designed to weed out the most promising startups from the rest of the pack. Some common questions to prepare for include:

What does the startup do?

What problem does the startup solve?

Why does your startup have a high growth potential?

Why is the team uniquely capable of executing the startup's business plan?

Compared to the competition, what does your startup do better?

What is the projected lifetime value of the customer?

What kind of traction has the startup achieved?

What will these funds help your startup do?

3. Send Pitch Deck Teaser

Before the investor meeting, send a quick introduction via email. In most cases, it's a good idea to attach your pitch deck to the email. This gives investors some extra time to review prior to the meeting. With that added time, investors can get a better understanding of your startup's unique value and prepare some succinct questions for follow-up.

4. Be Open to Criticism

Before the investor meeting, be sure to open yourself up to criticism. Remember – most experienced startup investors have "been there, done that." They've seen the very best and the very worst startup founders walk through their doors. To protect themselves, some investors may unleash some harsh criticism towards you and your startup. It's important to listen to investors. Use their feedback to guide your fundraising efforts and avoid making the same mistake twice.

5. Know Where the Money is Going

Finally and most importantly, know where the money is going. It's the number one thing that startup investors want to know. How will this investment contribute to the overall success of your organization? How will the application of these funds contribute to the success of the startup? Answers to these important questions will help your startup from appearing directionless and lost.

Achieve Startup Funding Success at RocketSpace

Beyond preparing for your investor meeting, there's one more thing you can do to maximize your chances for startup funding success: RocketSpace's Startup Services.

This program is designed to reduce the startup fundraising timeline by connecting entrepreneurs and founders to strategically aligned funding opportunities. RocketSpace's Startup Services team leverages extensive investor relationships to accelerate your fundraising journey. This three-month, three-phase program is designed to give you high-quality, hands-on, and customized coaching to lead you to the right investor. We have worked with a handful of industry-leading startups including Uber, Hootsuite, Zappos, and more! Are you ready to kickstart your fundraising journey with RocketSpace?

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Raising a Seed Round?

We've gathered insights from both founders of successfully funded startups and VCs, to create a list of tips and best practices to help make your fundraising roller coaster more productive and less daunting.